


What Doesn't Shake

by chaoticallyclev



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 08:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticallyclev/pseuds/chaoticallyclev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta dead, dying, out of reach, and Katniss still on fire</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Doesn't Shake

**Author's Note:**

> Katniss/Peeta, spoilers through the whole series. I've been referring to this as a kind of exercise in panic.

  


  


**What Doesn't Shake**  


 

There are so many things this story shouldn't be about, but it leaks in from every curve, every corner, every edge.

 

_Katniss_ , he says.

_Sweetheart_ , he says.

 

The taste of bile in her mouth, stings like trackerjacker venom digging in all over her skin.

 

_Here to finish me off?_

 

 

In the dreams she shouldn't still be having, a bloated body explodes in a mass of black puss,  
but the face remains— a face that is ever changing.

 

_tick tock, this is a clock  
and it’s ever winding through what you've lost._

 

 

In the dreams she shouldn't still be having,  
Gale is the boy with the spear and Prim is Rue is Prim,  
and she knows it isn't fair, but she hates him all the same.

 

 

In the dreams she shouldn't still be having,  
she walks along a shore with a red tide, picks up a shell and holds it to her ear,  
hears the screams of people being ripped apart,  
of mutts whispering her name with vowels soaked in blood,  
and never once hears the ocean that is lapping at her feet.

 

 

In the dreams she shouldn't still be having,  
she stands alone on a mountain of bodies and thinks,  
 _I did this,_  
while Snow's corpse laughs, laughs, laughs from somewhere beneath her feet.

 

In the dreams she shouldn't still be having,  
she's too late,  
treks through trails of mud only to trip on a camouflaged corpse.  
He bleeds out beneath her fingers, white-knuckled and trembling.  
He slips into the reach of monsters with vengeance in their familiar eyes and hatred in their movements.  
The timing is a second off, he swallows, but she doesn't, not yet, and that’s it.

 

Peeta dead, dying, out of reach, and Katniss still on fire.

 

 

She wakes up.

 

 

Peeta, behind the glass wall she can't break through. Peeta, on the screen. Peeta, in sight, but always out of reach.

 

 

She wakes up and she wakes up, but it never stops. She lies utterly still and desperately repeats,  
 _This isn’t the arena,  
This isn’t District 13,  
I am not going to die here, _  
until she can move her limbs, until her throat relaxes around the lump of terror choking her.

 

Peeta outside her window, planting primrose bushes. Peeta with his hand on her shoulder, between her teeth, keeping her from that fatal bite. Peeta with his hands around her neck, and his cold eyes. Peeta in a cell. Peeta with his hands cuffed behind him. Peeta with his free hand clasped in hers, saying _on the count of three._

 

She wakes up and yells,  
Peeta,  
Peeta,  
Peeta,  
and it's like watching herself back on that screen, glass walls and fear surrounding her,  
alone and wild with it.

_in sight, but always out of reach._

**Author's Note:**

> So one time I hallucinate-wrote Hunger Games fic, a while back, sent it to [](http://angelgazing.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**angelgazing**](http://angelgazing.dreamwidth.org/) and uh. mostly forgot about it because at the time I had no computer and then school and blah blah blah. Anyway. I think I've finally stopped tweaking it and also talking to [](http://epistolic.livejournal.com/profile)[**epistolic**](http://epistolic.livejournal.com/) reminded me that. I still hadn't posted it. So, doing that now!


End file.
